Medical practitioners (e.g., surgeons) often need to assess the position and/or orientation of a patient's anatomy while performing medical procedures (e.g., surgery). For example, a surgeon may require information regarding the position and/or orientation of a patient's bones with respect to the patient or a reference coordinate system in order to visualize the patient's anatomy and/or determine the position/orientation in which medical instruments used to assist in performing the medical procedure should be positioned. Further, medical practitioners performing medical procedures in which the patient's anatomy is being altered (e.g., a traditional pedicle subtraction osteotomy, which can involve removal of a portion of the bone in the vertebra of the patient) may need to assess the amount of change that is being made to the patient's anatomy at any given point of time during the medical procedure.
Although imaging techniques (e.g., CT-scans, x-rays, etc.) can be used to plan for a desired anatomical correction to the patient's body (pre-operation) and/or determine whether the desired anatomical correction has been achieved (post-operation), intraoperative imaging to determine the on-going changes to the patient's anatomy can be difficult, inconvenient, and result in interruption of the medical procedure. For example, when performing an operation to correct an anatomical issue in a patient's spine, intraoperative assessment of the changes in the patient's anatomy, using traditional imaging techniques, may require the medical practitioner to pause the medical procedure (e.g., step back from the operating table and allow an imaging device to be brought in) so that an image of the patient's anatomy can be obtained.
Further, most traditional imaging techniques tend to only provide snapshots of the patient's anatomical structure. Although these snapshots can illustrate progressive changes to the patient's anatomy in a quantitative manner, they do not provide data of the changes as they occur in real-time. Additionally, depending on how the imaging device is positioned, the obtained image can be a subjective representation of the patient's anatomy. Therefore, when used intraoperatively, the surgeon performing the surgery may need to make a subjective assessment of when a desired anatomical orientation has been achieved. This can result in sub-optimal patient outcomes and repeat surgeries due to over- or under-correction with respect to the planned correction.
Exemplary systems and methods for intraoperatively measuring anatomical orientation using electronic devices are disclosed in U.S. application Ser. No. 14/471,120 filed on Aug. 28, 2014, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. There is a continual need for improved ways of packaging, calibrating, and testing surgical electronic devices, improving the accuracy of such devices, and for making such devices more user-friendly.